In a telecommunications network described by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a BS is one of the important functional components of the telecommunications network and is an important guarantee for revenues of an operator.
As defined in the 3GPP protocol, when an online charging system (OCS) is unavailable, a user may be switched to offline charging, thereby ensuring continuing use of a service, improving user experience, and avoiding a loss to the operator. To avoid an account overdraft caused when the user who is switched to offline charging uses the service for a long time, a holding timer is usually used to set duration for offline charging. The user is deactivated after timeout. If the OCS has recovered when the user goes online again, online charging is recovered, or if the OCS has not recovered, offline charging is continued. After the user is switched to offline charging, a generated charging data record carries a switched-to-offline flag. The BS may eventually perform complementary fee deduction on the charging data record carrying the switched-to-offline flag.
In other approaches, there are no online charging auto-recovery mechanism in a process from a time at which the user is switched to offline charging to a time at which the user is deactivated. Consequently, online charging is not recovered in a timely manner. This increases a probability of an account overdraft caused when the user who has been switched to offline charging continues to use the service. If an overdraft cannot be reclaimed, a loss may be caused to the operator. In addition, the user is deactivated after timeout of the holding timer, and the service is interrupted during reactivation of the user. This affects user experience.